My Best Friend's Girl (22 page)

“tell me again, please tell me again”

chapter 27

W
hose idea was it to come up to town on a Saturday?

Even when I was childless and single I avoided central Leeds on the weekend unless I had no other choice. Working in a large department store meant that didn’t happen often—I had access to everything from clothes to homeware, books to computer accessories.

Today, however, we were pushing our way through the crowds of the St. John’s Center, having been driven into town by his Royal Highness Luke Wiseman. He who had decreed that we should come up here for the day. “It’ll be fun,” he said, in hearing range of Miss Hedonist herself, Tegan Brannon, knowing that once she was on his side I wouldn’t refuse.

Outside was saturated with cold. White plumes of expelled air rose up from the people huddled in coats, hands pushed deep into pockets, heads down against the wind that clawed frost across any exposed body part. In less than twenty steps I had crossed the ice-slimy brick pavement and pushed open the glass door to Angeles’s biggest department-store rival up north, John Lewis. I held the door for Tegan and Luke, who were right behind me, then crossed the entrance to the next set of glass doors. Pushing that one open and stepping through, I held it for them then carried on. I was assailed again by people. The chill that had attached itself to my skin and clothes evaporated and I was instantly too hot.

I was striding toward the escalator when a woman who didn’t seem to know it was winter—what with her outfit of micro-mini and big woolly sweater—bashed into my shoulder with her shoulder while, at the same time, her plastic shopping bag, which had something heavy and glass in it, connected with the bony bit of my shin. The crack rang in my ears as the pain knocked stars behind my eyes. Instead of apologizing, like most people would, she shot me a filthy look, then stalked on. “Do you wanna break the other fucking leg too?” I turned to shout at her until I caught sight of Tegan and Luke heading through the crowd, the pair of them smiling at the shoppers they passed. The insult dried up in my mind. I couldn’t do that sort of thing anymore—I was a responsible, example-setting parent.

I returned to my leg and allowed myself a loud but soundless, “Ow!” as I bent to rub at my damaged shin.
I may never walk again
, I decided when my fingers connected with the afflicted area and pain jolted up my leg. “Bitch, I should’ve taken her down,” I hissed, then straightened up, managing to knock into another solid human form.

Does anyone else want to fucking knock me about, or what?
I screamed inside, swiveling my glare to the latest person to make my hit list. My body was jolted again, this time not in pain but in shock. My heart stopped beating and the breath caught in my chest as my eyes focused on the man in front of me.

Nate.

Like twin beacons of astonishment, my name flashed up in his eyes: Kam. He said it too; breathed the single-syllable word between his plump, pink lips: “Kam.”

Weeks had passed since Luke had convinced me to refocus on adopting Tegan and I still hadn’t made steps toward contacting Nate. I couldn’t. Every time I thought of him, of his face at the funeral, of forming words to speak to him, my mind would blank it out and I’d retreat into denial. I couldn’t do it.

Nate was exactly as I remembered him: his brown-black hair softly sculpted into short peaks away from his face. His skin still smooth. His navy blue eyes that could effortlessly unearth my deepest kept secret. His nose, straight with its small upturn at the end. His mouth, my favorite part of his face, like firm marshmallows made from a mold of Cupid’s bow. My eyes swept over his face again. He hadn’t changed a bit.

“It is you, isn’t it?” he asked when I didn’t speak. “I’m not hallucinating or anything, am I?”

I shook my head, unable to jump-start my vocal cords.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” he continued.

I moistened my lips, ready to attempt a reply, when Luke—Tegan sitting on his shoulders, her gloved hands holding on to the fingertips of his bare hands—appeared beside me. He looked at me, saw the imprint of shock on my face, then took in Nate’s wide forehead, his big eyes, soft mouth and the full-size version of Tegan’s nose, and his heartbeat almost visibly tripled. “We’ll wait for you over there,” my lover mumbled, then navigated the pair of them away from us before Tegan had a chance to speak.

Nate blinked at me a few times. “What are the chances?” he asked as though we hadn’t been interrupted.

“Nathaniel,” I finally uttered.

“Nate,” he corrected, searching my eyes for a flicker of a memory. “You’re the one who started calling me that, you can’t go full name on me now.” He smiled and my stomach turned to jelly, quivering at the bottom of my abdomen.

“Nathaniel,” I repeated, using a firmer tone as I grappled for control of the situation. Before the funeral, the last time I’d seen him was the day I returned to London for my belongings and left him—the day my eyes were dry, red holes in my head and he looked like he hadn’t slept in years—and in this moment there was every danger the shock of this meeting would consume me. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I live here,” he replied.

“What? In Leeds?” I recoiled; he couldn’t, he just couldn’t. Having two hundred miles between us had always been a comforting factor in our breakup—there was no chance of running into him.

“Yes. No. I mean, no. I live in Tadcaster. Halfway between Leeds and York.” He pointed over his shoulder, as though Tadcaster could be found in the haberdashery department. “I, erm, got a job as group scheduler at Yorkshire and Pennines FM. Erm, about a year or so now.”

“OK,” I said, outwardly nonchalant, internally appalled: I’d spent the past twelve months playing Russian roulette with bumping into him. That thought was nauseating.

“Obviously you still live up here,” he said.

“Obviously.”

Nate’s expression changed, the shock whisked away and replaced by sadness. “How are you coping since…?” His voice trailed. Since…Nate, like everyone else, me included, avoided that word, skirting around it like a pothole in the road. Pretending it wasn’t there, as though death wasn’t as bad, as devastating, if you didn’t utter the word.

I shrugged. “I’m fine, I guess. How are you?”

“Much the same.” Our eyes slotted together like a key slipping into a lock, and I was free-falling, cut adrift in time. I didn’t know when I was, if I was back four years ago, gazing into Nate’s navy blue eyes, wondering why he loved me; why he was so good to me. Then I was falling again—further back, meeting him for our first date and seeing his eyes crinkle up as they saw me. I almost surrendered to the falling. Almost stepped forward expecting his arms to loop around me while I immersed myself in the closeness of his warm body. It’d be so easy. All I had to do was let go of the ledge of reality I was clinging to and plummet into my history like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole. Let it happen. Feel it all again.
Pull yourself together!
I snapped at myself, wrenching my sensibilities back into the present.

“I did think about getting in touch,” Nate said carefully.

“I didn’t know how you’d react, though, if it’d just add to it all.”

Enough Adele talk
, I decided, lowering my head to my scuffed, tan leather boots. I raised my left foot and rubbed the tip clean on the back of the right leg of my jeans, effectively distancing myself from him. Nate couldn’t understand how lacerated I felt most of the time, no one except possibly Tegan could understand. That every day that I didn’t simply stop, frozen with grief, was an excellent day. Nate, simply by being there, was smearing salt-coated guilt into the wound. Talking about it would result in a breakdown.

Understanding almost straightaway that I wasn’t talking about it anymore, Nate changed the subject. “Boyfriend?” he asked.

I raised my head. “Sorry?”

“That guy.” He inclined his head in Luke and Tegan’s direction. I followed his line of sight. A little way away, standing in front of a glass case of expensive, delicate silver jewelry, Luke was unselfconsciously dancing, bobbing from one foot to the other, holding on to Tegan’s hands and bouncing her on his shoulders as he moved in time to Elvis’s “Little Less Conversation” playing over the store’s speakers. She giggled loudly as her hair, loose around her face and topped by her furry black hat, moved like golden waves in time with the rhythm. They were two of the happiest people in the store; even the grumpiest shoppers grinned a little when they walked past the jiggling pair. “Is he your boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” I smiled, proud that he was my man because he so unreservedly loved Tegan.

“And that’s his daughter?”

I tore my gaze from them to frown at Nate, searching his face for a sign that he recognized her. Nothing. A blank expression accompanied his question as he awaited my reply. I wasn’t surprised he didn’t recognize Adele’s daughter. We had virtually lived with them, but Nate wasn’t interested in children—he had a voracious appetite for adult company, loved socializing and being with people, but children, who he didn’t know how to communicate with, nothing. He would watch Tegan performing one of her dances if we made him, but he’d always have one eye on the television or on the paper or staring into space. When I told him she’d said her first word, he’d managed to say, “Really?” in such a way that he almost convinced me he was interested.

“No,” I replied to his question about Luke and Tegan.

“He’s looking after her.”

“Oh.” He smiled slightly at me. “Cute kid.”

I moistened my lips, ready to utter,
Your kid
, then realized that it wasn’t the right setting: a department store on a Saturday afternoon, with hundreds of people milling around, wasn’t the ideal place to discover you were a father. Very few places would be ideal but this was less perfect than most.

Should I tell him anyway?
I wondered, staring up at him. What if Nate wanted in on her life? Not likely, considering his apathy toward children, but it still worried me. My instincts told me not to tell him at all, to leave him in the happy state of ignorance within which he’d existed for six years. He was her father though, and Tegan had a right to know him, to have him in her life, especially after losing her mother.

In the years before I left, I had repeatedly lectured Adele on Tegan’s need to know her father. Now I knew how simplistic—unenlightened—I had been. I’d had no idea, no comprehension of what living under the threat of Tegan having a father was like. Even if “daddy” didn’t want to lure her away, he could reject her, which would permanently damage her. Rejection by a parent—there was no bigger betrayal. Besides, Tegan, right now, had the complete family set. My parents were her grandparents—she called them Nana Faith and Grandpa Hector, my brothers and sister were her uncles and aunt, their children her cousins. When she went to visit my sister’s children in Manchester she always came back regaling me with tales of the fun they’d had together. She wasn’t lacking in relatives and people who cared for her. Nate was blood though. Blood and genes, her connection to the great biological pool of life. The codes of her molecules had been written by Nate’s body and by his parents’ bodies before him. We couldn’t give her that. Not me, not my family, not Luke. She and Nate had an indelible connection. Even if I didn’t want him in my life anymore, I owed it to Tegan to tell him.

“Look,” I said, managing to initiate sustained eye contact, “we should talk, properly…About everything.”

Surprise leaped onto Nate’s face. “You really want to?” he asked cautiously, wondering if I was toying with him.

Want to? No. Have to? Yes.
I nodded. “Have you got a number I can reach you on?”

He delved into the inside pocket of his camel-colored wool coat and took out his battered black wallet, removed a business card and handed it to me. The small white card had all his contact details—work number, mobile and e-mail—on it. I pocketed it as we said brief, stiff goodbyes. We turned away in unison and I walked toward Tegan and Luke without looking back.

“Who’s that man?” Tegan asked as I approached them. Luke stopped his dance and looked at me.

I stared up at Tegan. Her cheeks were pink from her laughter, her royal blue eyes danced with curiosity and excitement, and her lips were parted in a blissful half-smile. For Tegan, things didn’t get much better than this. “An old friend of mine,” I replied.

“He doesn’t look that old,” she observed sagely. “Not as old as Luke.”

“Cheers, madam,” he muttered, raising his amber-brown eyes to her in mock ill-humor.

“I mean, he’s a friend I knew from a long time ago.”

“Did he know my mummy?” she asked unexpectedly.

“Yes, he did.”

“Does he know she’s gone to heaven to be with Jesus and the angels?” Tegan always made Adele’s death sound as though she’d gone to join a pop band; like we could expect an impromptu performance from them featuring a special chorus sung by Adele Brannon.

“Yes, sweetheart, he knows. And he was sad, but he’s glad he knew her before she went to heaven.”

Tegan beamed, which threw me. I’d expected her to be upset; instead she seemed happy, completely unfazed. “He’s a nice man. Can we see him again?”

I felt Luke’s eyes burning symmetrical holes into my face as his expression echoed,
“Well, can we?”

“Maybe,” I replied, ignoring Luke’s unwavering gaze.

“We’ll have to see.”

Eight years ago, I entered a café in north London and found it was virtually empty, apart from the man running a grubby dishcloth over tabletops and a woman who sat at the back alternating sips of coffee with drags on a cigarette as she stared into space. The third person in there was Nate. My date. He sat at a table with his head lowered, engrossed in a newspaper. I checked my watch to confirm I was on time because, judging from how far he’d got into his newspaper, and the empty white mug of coffee on the table beside the paper, it was obvious he’d been there a while.

My stomach tumbled over itself, unexpectedly gripped with nerves. I hadn’t been bothered either way as I’d come down here for our first date, having met him a month earlier, but now there was a mass of fidgety, agitated butterflies crawling over each other inside me. “Hi,” I said.